Yesterday, I watched my sister walk across the stage at Columbia University to receive her MBA.
My sister is a mother of three amazing children, a full-time professional, a frequent traveler for work, and a runner. In the middle of all of that, she went back to school. Her oldest child was accepted into multiple Ivy League universities and has chosen to attend Harvard in the fall.
To say I am proud of her is an understatement.
We are, in the truest sense, the immigrant story. Our family arrived in this country with little more than suitcases full of clothes. Our parents set aside their own hopes and dreams so that ours could take root. And here we are, a generation later, achieving things they only imagined for us, while our children begin to benefit from sacrifices they will never fully know were made.
As the students walked across the stage to receive their diplomas, I noticed something that made me sit up straight. Many of them carried young children in their arms. Toddlers. Babies. And I sat there doing the math. The MBA is a two-year program. Which means some of these women were pregnant, gave birth, and finished their degree while caring for a newborn, all while holding a full-time job.
The math was not mathing. My mind was blown. Did they ever sleep?
Sleep, I suppose, among many other things, was the sacrifice. The short-term pain for the long-term gain.
That evening, I attended another graduation celebration, this time for a close friend. The theme of sacrifice surfaced again. Our friend Nik had just graduated while his wife Sarah, worked full-time and cared for their two-year-old daughter. And while he was in school, they welcomed their second child. For Sarah, these were years of exhaustion, of holding everything together, of being the financial provider while running on very little. She sacrificed so he could build.
We sacrifice our today for the architecture of our tomorrow.
And we often think of sacrifice as something grand and dramatic. But actually, we make small sacrifices every single day. The lunch we skip to finish a project. The show we do not watch because the emails need answering. The social plans we decline because the work is not done. The sleep we give up to get one more thing across the finish line. These small surrenders, repeated daily, are the real fabric of building something.
I think about this in the context of KAEIU constantly. The years of doing pop-ups alone, driving home exhausted, wondering if it was worth it. The evenings spent editing photos instead of resting. The money reinvested instead of saved. None of it dramatic. All of it deliberate.
Watching my sister cross that stage, watching those graduates carry their babies in their arms, I was reminded that the sacrifices we make in the quiet, ordinary moments are the ones that eventually add up to something extraordinary.
You may not see it yet. But it is being built.
With love,
Maria
Me, my sis, and our kids that are a year apart.